Pthigrivi

Thats what I did. I know they've talked about it but a transfer window calculator + alarm clock would be amazing.

Yeah Ive noticed a few parts that seem to ignore fairings. Trying to build more concrete notes on that. Curious.

After several experiments I have to agree the high atmo (60+km) heat flux seems way overboard. Yeah Im going fast but intuitively you should just be hitting way fewer molecules and the friction should be much lower until you dip to 50km or so. I'd be curious the math on this vs real life reentry.

I've been working my way pretty slowly and deliberately through 0.2 taking notes, and among my "this is awesome" category the sound and music remains consistently high. Lighting also is 100% better in the last update. I think there are lots and lots of opportunities for refinement and improvement but overall the tone, pacing, scaling, and core basics are in really, really good shape.

Oh! I hope so! 0.2 is the first time the game has worked on my machine in months so I'll have to do more experimentation.

I haven't yet gotten to the point where Im building spaceplanes but they create a very specific use-case for this--manually pumping fuel between an aft and stern tank to manage CoM while descending. I don't know if a lot of players do this but its hugely useful for managing your reentry AoA and dialing your descent to the airstrip.

I have played and adored nearly all of Chris's mods and they are absolutely brilliant. I don't always agree with him though when it comes to gameplay. I think efficiency and simplicity are really important but I'll return again and again to the chess vs checkers example. What makes good gameplay is not absolute simplicity, but maximizing the ratio between input rule complexity and total output creative gamespace. Sometimes a very large investment in dev work results in a very small increase in creative gameplay. Sometimes a modest investment in dev work results in a HUGE increase in creative gameplay. Every smart developer is playing these odds. I happen to think there were some decisions in KSP1 like instant scanning on polar orbit and not incorporating biome maps that were huge missed opportunities, and across the board when you talk to folks who used SCANsat the verdict is pretty unanimous that the mod did it better. Thats because it hit that sweet spot leveraging a bit more complexity in design to capture a much more robust gameplay experience. I think avoiding LoS, real-time mapping, time-based mechanics, and life support are similar kinds of missed opportunities where a modest investment in development time could leverage a much more dynamic set of design, planning, and navigation puzzles for the game.

I'll be making more specific critiques over the next few weeks but I will say Im not a great fan of the pixelated aesthetic. I think games really need to cater to accessibility as a default but especially in a game where players are rapidly glancing at multiple fast-moving number values instant legibility is absolutely paramount. All text needs to be in a much more readable font and stylization should take a backseat.

Man o man that’s insane. I think part of it is in KSP1 Id gotten used to having modded aerocapture trajectories visible so Ive seen how every km matters and planned on maxing my capture altitude with the understanding that this would be a multi-pass approach. By the time I was doing crewed Joolean moon missions Id also have stations and tugs in LKO so I could reuse interplanetary equipment, and designed interplanetary vessels with reuse in mind. Crew would never descend to Kerbin in the same capsule they left in. They’d aerocapture to LKO and then transfer to a purpose build shuttle to return them home.

Wow 33km? Im much more used to an 80km Ap to 55km Pe reentry. I'll have to do more dangerous testing. Out of the gate I'll say I think we need more bow-shock buffer around heatsheilds' shadow (like a 1.25m shield has a 1.5m shadow) but I should do more test-to-destruction to be sure.

I think this is a little cynical but probably not far off, and certainly gathering broad data from as many players as possible is important. I like Dakota's Top 10 requests thread for that reason as it kind of captured some broad expectations in a democratic way. Still I hope they do read some of the deeper dives and longer discussions we've had on specific elements as I think just like with the Factorio community there are a lot of people out there that have thought about these problems for a long time and can provide both more specific and more theoretical insights on how this or that system is progressing or could progress.

Id love to see a bit more reveal and discussion about upcoming features and what they have planned and absolutely agree it would help guide feedback even on current features. For instance much of the feedback on the science update has been about the lack of constraints on part cost, which might be solved down the road by resources but we have no clear idea how. Will resources even matter at KSC or just at colonies? Having a broad idea how this will be tackled helps focus the discussion on the released content and probably helps give a bit of clarity on tech tree balance as well (like what is the role of solid boosters and why are they on the main-line tech path rather than on their own branch?) Having a better sense of the role kerbals might play down the road helps inform feedback on balance between different experiments and playstyles. Certainly having a clearer picture of how future features will treat time as a factor has deep implications for how experiments could and should work and how progress down the tech tree relates to launch windows and overall exploration pacing. As an example Im really enjoying the Factorio Friday Facts as Wube leads up to 2.0. Each week they put together a bit of a dive on an upcoming feature, some small, some large. Many have been well received and others have been controversial and sparked debate among fans. These are long-time experienced players and content creators with the background and intuition to extrapolate the implications of a given change. Those discussions then spurred follow-up clarifications by the devs and Im sure a bit of recalculation here and there. I kind of agree that previous to 0.2 KSP may have been in too rocky a state for that kind of generous approach to be received well but it really does feel like we’ve turned a corner. (I also agree that if IG had kept their powder dry and released what we have now this process might have gone much more smoothly, but water under the bridge.) But given that things are performing much better with many fewer showstopper bugs and something close to feature parity with KSP1 Id love to see that more transparent, open and excited-to-share approach return. It doesn’t need to be every week, maybe every 2 weeks digging into a bit more detail on how colonies will work, what the thinking is, how they will relate to expanding the science system, etc. We have been getting a bit of that but its been a bit scattershot and unstructured. We only got deep dives on science after it had been locked in without any real way to weigh in before we had our hands on it. Despite the risks I think gathering feedback earlier in the process might be informative and give players a greater sense of buy-in.

You and I have had our differences but dude that is horrific online behavior and that never should have happened to you. I think we’re not supposed to comment much on moderator stuff so we should leave it there. Yeah I feel like anyone who’s played Factorio for a minute instantly recognizes the problem as a lack of filters. Each storage container should have the option to be filled by a specific resource rather than being dumped in a heap. Its one of the reasons I find it strange we don’t already have tank-switching because when we get to resources we’re definitely going to want the ability to sort and switch storage types on a tank-by-tank basis. Why not build that in right away?

You might not know but you have built up a bit of a reputation here which folks may be reacting to Be that as it may I do try to take arguments at face value. On this point though I don't want to get into a whole Starfield thing but it is a point of comparison. My feeling is that the trading aspect (which is much more classically salient in an RPG) unfortunately acts as a backstop for bad outpost production design. Managing resource production and preventing storage clogs are so clumsy that players have to fall back on just buying complex components at a vendor out of shear frustration. That kind of sucks, and KSP2 really shouldn't allow itself to fall into that trap.

I agree absolutely with your first point, and I can see also how letting players play with interstellar drives and build up constraint-free interstellar vessels will give the devs a sense of what goal transport mass and fuel quantities are needed to cross that threshold, but precisely because all of those free-parts, free-colonies, free-interstellar settlements and vessels will be essentially driven by luxury and cosmetics rather than efficiency its not going to give good mark-to-market values for those endeavors. I'll also put out there that if we don't have proper transfer window and flight planning tools the devs aren't going to see a substantial portion of the the player base going interplanetary let alone contemplating interstellar flight. Its the same as adding all these dope discoverables and not giving players the in-game tools to find them. In some ways incorporating resources after colonies but before interstellar might sound at face value less sexy but actually gives players way more actual gameplay to bite into earlier.

I actually agree with this, and it has a lot to do with some very tricky balancing when it comes to the number of available resources, their rarity both via offworld extraction and potentially at KSC itself, and specific part costs. One big question mark that's persisted for me since they debuted the roadmap was why resources come next to last rather than before colonies and interstellar, but Im kinda starting to see why: it's the hardest part. I still think it could have come after colonies but before interstellar but that causes some problems too. At the very least you need to know colonies are working first because colonies are probably your primary source of resource processing. Regardless there are some fundamental questions about how specific and complex do you get when it comes to raw resources and resource chains. Im honestly flabbergasted at the number of raw resources Starfield has as a part of its crafting system when that's not even the game's main focus (Starfield also runs afoul of other really basic logistics-based problems which were totally avoidable) KSP should really learn from those mistakes and establish a fully considered and balanced flow between whats available, how hard it is to extract, transport, and process, and how that translates into individual part costs. The question you're asking though about the 'solid booster problem' is a good one, and relates both to how resources work at KSC and how 'affordability' works generally in a game that has time-warp. I've said many times that at some point the devs are going to need to confront the problem of time-based mechanics. There's a bit of dabbling here in science, but I haven't yet gotten the sense that they're taking this problem head on. My feeling is that once they realize this problem is actually unavoidable they'll be able to tap into its opportunities rather than just fearing its results.

I don't think this is a bad idea. It might get a little fussy in practice, requiring players to assemble slightly too specific combinations of science flavors to advance the way they like. I imagine they stuck to the single-flavor science model because it gave players maximum flexibility in the kinds of missions they wanted to fly and then what they could buy with the results, allowing them to rapidly pivot from atmospheric missions to deep space or whatever. Its one of those things you'd have to very carefully test to make it work. Even the current simplified version will surely require some rejiggering over time.

This brings up a really important clarification: by 'map' I don't mean a 2d graphic buried in some menu. You're absolutely right that wouldn't really have the the resolution or in-the-moment utility needed. By map I mean a full 3d overlay on the body's surface thats visible both in map mode and in flight mode, something you could toggle to while in orbit or in the landing sequence that would show you what the precise lay of the land is in front of you. You should also have a visible trajectory line and target mark on the projected landing zone in flight mode to help with landing accurately. After all in the not too distant future we'll be introducing colonies, and part of that supposedly is manually landing multiple starter modules, ideally within a pretty tight cluster. Its also really important for getting close to these cool new discoverables. New players may not be able to land on a dime the way many of us can, but if they can get within a few kilometers and bring a rover they've unlocked a whole new world of gameplay. We should be giving players all the tools in the world to make that achievable.

I'd sort of avoided this thread cause its title is a bit clickbaity but then I saw it was Joe and Im sure he was just venting a bit (it happens to the best of us). Reading through all this I think obviously many different players have their own preferences in how they'd like to play and obviously no one is having fun wrong. I've been taking my time here over the last few days digging in so I haven't gotten to the later experiments to test out their dynamics, but so far a lot of the changes are good. Like others I think the science button is an improvement over right-clicking half a dozen small parts but I also think there's room to improve the result-management UI. Once I get through a full playthrough I'll write more fully on my thoughts and recommendations here. I think the thrust of Joe's lament that started this thread is not necessarily some of these nitty-gritty details but the overall sense that science lacks 'purpose'. He'd like to see a KSPedia that gets infilled over time with sciencey information. Now, I love Just Jim's work and the flavor text is great, but I think we actually need a bit more than that. I've written about this in the past but the best way to make science feel like science is for it to produce information thats useful and valuable to the player. Real science carries with it a bit of mysticism, a sense that just knowing new things about the world we live in is a noble and fulfilling enterprise. I don't think a game can do that exactly because that means unveiling actual new information for humanity as a whole. The other thing real science does however is provide useful information, in spaceflight-terms data that allows us to improve the way we design and build probes and the way we deploy them. Thats why we send orbiter probes to scan planetary surfaces looking for ideal places to land, why we do atmospheric analysis to help probes better survive on those bodies. Studying the geology and mineralogy on other worlds teaches us about their history, yes, but will also be crucial to deciding where to set up colonies, how to process and produce fuel and building materials in the future. I think this is the area that KSP2 is currently lacking--producing useful science. And that kind of science is very achievable within the context of a game. Take a game like Starfeild--not a particularly accurate game from a science standpoint, but even in that game scanning does feel like scanning. You're learning about what resources are available and where. You're learning if the environment is hot or cold or caustic. When you scan flora and fauna you're finding out what their temperament is, what resources they produce, whether they can be farmed. All of that information is directly usable by the player. Right now science in KSP2 isn't doing that. Now, for sure, much of that is directly related to resources and prospecting and that may be coming down the road. That doesn't mean there isn't an ocean of information players aren't currently getting that experiments could reveal. I've mentioned it a few times but MAPS. Off the bat altimetry and slope maps are really important for selecting landing zones and helping players land on level, clear ground. That could be in the game right now. We also absolutely need biome maps. One thing that seems curiously missing is a way for players to track what data they've already gathered so they can check it off the list and not be distracted by it. Biome maps could not only help players see whats out there and plan but also help them track the places where they've already been. We also desperately need a way to search for and ping discoverables. They look really cool but if we don't have an in-game process for highlighting their locations they don't really contribute much to the experience, sadly. All of this could be gathered using a solid orbital scanning system that plays directly into polar orbital insertion, perhaps even elliptical orbits in which one instrument gathers a set of broad information from higher up while another gathers more specific information from a lower altitude, etc. Thats exactly the kind of in-engine minigame that relates directly to real-life science that KSP could capture beautifully. (Its also the reason I think omitting LoS is probably a mistake.) So unlocking parts and producing useful maps are two ways science could be relevant to players, but there are others. For instance trajectory factoring drag could be really important for aerobraking and landing accurately on planets with atmospheres. There's also a simulation mode that might be employed to let players test crewed landers virtually in a place they've already landed a probe. Certainly many of these experiments could help in resource prospecting down the road. We also absolutely need a more fulsome flight planner to help plan for transfer windows and add up complex dV budgets, but I personally wouldn't hide that behind experiments. I'd just make that available out of the gate and include a tutorial after players had done their first Mun or Minmus landing to give them a nudge to go interplanetary. Im sure there are a number of other ways though that experiments could provide valuable information to players outside just ticking down the tech tree.

We really need scanning to come into the game—flight information maps and POI scanning, and do it SCANsat style. Planetary surfaces are enormous and if these discoverables aren’t scannable they aren’t really part of the game. Its okay just to show where they are. What matters is encouraging precision landing and surface exploration.

Edit. Hm nm the thread says it has to do with my account. Weird.

Well its not political conversation. Its a question about discovery mode’s lack of efficiency constraints and what might close that gap. (At least thats the conversation Im hoping to have) Yeah Ive always thought an upgradeable fuel farm/ resource depot would be a great way to make resource part costs work at KSC.

Knowing us they probably will, Ive just never imagined KSP would lean deep into the economic sim side of it given its engineering focus. It feels like a distraction from core ‘build and fly’ gameplay. I don’t even dislike money as a method for teaching and encouraging vehicle efficiency, it just seems redundant if we’re already paying for parts with physical resources.

Im imagining its more of a resource collection + crafting system using supply routes and processors at colonies to make parts + fuel. That keeps it more tied into physics, transportation, and real world chemistry. It also hugely grows the types of vehicles you have to design and the kinds of engineering and navigation puzzles you have to solve. That to me seems more to the core of KSPs gameplay than getting sidetracked in economic sims. The real question is what happens on kerbin? Are resources free or?

Resources are a planned feature. They do all the gameplay work money might do in a way thats more continuously useful as players build colonize beyond Kerbin. Money just doesn’t need to exist from a gameplay standpoint.